Tamil Nadu - Tiruchi   

Farm workers plan rally to Parliament

Members of the All-India Agricultural Workers Union taking out the rally in Tiruchi city on Monday.

TIRUCHI: The All India Agricultural Workers' Union (AIAWU) has decided to organise a march to Parliament during the winter session as a culmination of the nation-wide grassroots campaigns on employment and wages, and demanding proper implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) with 150 days of work a year and a minimum wage of Rs. 200 per day.

The demand was adopted as a resolution at the end of the union's seventh All India conference here.

Talking to reporters at the end of the three-day conference, the union general secretary, A. Vijayaraghavan, said grassroots campaign through street-corner meetings and door-to door sensitisation exercises would be carried out in villages from October 2.

Delegates debated the pernicious policies of the Central government and its attempt at marginalising the rural masses, particularly agricultural labourers, and decried the tweaking of the criteria to identify Below Poverty Line beneficiaries of Public Distribution System. Deserving masses had been left out of the scheme in large numbers, he said, citing the instance of the predominantly tribal population in Amaravathi district of Maharashtra. “The poor man has a right to livelihood. We carried out a door-to-door survey in the district and found that there was a very high incidence of child malnutrition in the district with 90 per cent population of tribals,” he said.

There was no point in emulating the economic models of western countries, he said, explaining that in India 60 per cent of the population was dependent on agriculture.

Changes could be ushered in only through mass movements, he said, pointing out that naxalism was non-existent in States where land reforms had been carried out. The AIAWU would extend its support to the nation-wide general strike called by trade unions on September 7, said Mr. Vijayaraghavan.

The new-office bearers elected at the conference were: Paturu Ramayya – president; Bhanulal Saha, Sarangdhar Paswan, M.V. Govindan Master, B. Venkat, and S. Thirunavukkrasu – vice-presidents; A. Vijayaraghavan – general secretary; and Suneet Chopra, Hannan Mollah and Kumar Shiralkar – joint secretaries.

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Farm workers plan rally to Parliament

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